Tag Archives: e-Estonia: sharing best practices

Estonia, a European Union member country flourishing on the Baltic Sea in Nordic Europe, became soon known as ‘e-Estonia‘. Being one of the most advanced e-societies in the world, it wrote an incredible success story that grew out of a partnership between a tech-savvy population, private and public sector. Thanks to this success, Estonians and the Estonian state enjoy a wide range of e-solutions that are years ahead of those of other countries, making it the leading example for others who wish to follow the same path. Now, their success story and best practices are shared with the world in a dedicated portal

e-Estonia: Life in the Digital Society
e-Estonia means voting in elections from the comfort of your own living room. Filing your income tax return in just five minutes. Signing a legally-binding contract over the Internet, from anywhere in the world, via your mobile phone. These are just a few of the services that Estonians take advantage of on a regular basis.

For their part, entrepreneurs can register businesses in as little 20 minutes, check vital company, property and legal records online, and even integrate their own secure services with the ones offered by the state. Interaction among government agencies, and between the government and citizens, has been completely transformed in e-Estonia, quickly making bureaucracy a thing of the past and making the running of all levels of government more efficient than ever before.

Estonia’s e-solutions have resulted in:
* An unprecedented level of transparency and accessibility in government
* Safe, convenient and flexible exchange of private, government and corporate data
* A healthier, better educated population with easy access to social services
* A prosperous environment for business and entrepreneurship

e-Estonia: Digital Society and Infrastructure
The e-Estonia digital society is made possible largely due to its infrastructure. Instead of developing a single, all-encompassing central system, Estonia created an open, decentralized system that links together various services and databases. The flexibility provided by this open set-up has allowed new components of the digital society to be developed and added through the years. It’s that power to expand that has allowed Estonia to grow into one of Europe’s success stories of the last decade.